Three Up, Three Down
by dharmamonkey
Summary: A one-shot drabble. Booth reflects on the night that Hannah refused his proposal.


A/N: This was a blurb I wrote for a writing workshop. The quote below was the prompt. You all know who the narrator is and who he is talking about. The people in my writing class probably don't.

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><p><em>"We are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself."<em>

–Samuel Johnson

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><p>Three up, three down—a perfect inning. Except it wasn't a perfect inning. It was the story of my pathetic, goddamn life.<p>

What was it about me that women don't want what I have to offer? I'd loved three women more than any of the others. One, Rebecca, the mother of my son, refused to marry me. The second, Bones—the woman I'd worked with for six years and come to love more than I'd loved any woman before—would not take a chance on a relationship with me. The third, Hannah—the woman I'd met overseas, who'd followed me back to the States and moved in with me—had also refused me when I asked her to marry me.

Three up, three down.

After six months living with me, sharing my place, my meals, my bed and—I thought—my life, I asked Hannah to marry me. She refused me. "I'm not the marrying type," she said to me. She had said she loved me, but when I offered to give her my love, my life, for the rest of her days, she didn't want it.

I sat there on a barstool in the corner, staring into my third double Jameson, but I didn't really feel like drinking. I didn't feel like anything. I wanted to disappear, to evaporate into nothing, because in that moment, I felt like I was nothing, a worthless waste. No one wanted me. No one wanted to love me. No one wanted the love I had to give. I stared into the amber liquor in my glass and sighed, my nostrils flaring at the whiskey's powerful vapors.

I heard a woman's laugh over my left shoulder, and I looked up from my glass. A man and a woman sat at the other end of the bar, his arm wrapped around her slender waist as she threw her head back in laughter. She placed her hand on his, and it was then that I saw it—a little glint, a sparkle on her hand—and it made my stomach clench in dread and regret. I tried not to think of how many months of salary I'd tossed into the Reflecting Pool after my proposal had been refused, the little black velvet box settling into the silt at the bottom of the pool. None of it mattered anyway.

The bartender glanced my way and, seeing that I'd made no progress on my third Jameson, turned away again. Then I saw his eyes meet hers, and then she looked over her shoulder at me, her fingers threaded between her companion's as they curled around her hip. A smile crossed her face as she winked at me and turned away.

That night, as I stared through the amber transluscence of three ounces of Irish whiskey and watched the happy couple on the other end of the bar, I wondered if I would ever be happy, if I would ever find the happiness I wanted in a woman who I could love and who would love me for thirty, forty or fifty years. That night, with my confidence shattered, I gave up trying. I decided was no longer going to look for love, because clearly my efforts at looking led me to find what I thought I wanted, though in the end, it was clear that what I'd found, either she didn't want me or, in at least one case, I didn't really want her. So I decided I was done looking.

And, in the end, it found me. Only when I stopped trying so hard to look for love and happiness—that thirty, forty or fifty years that I wanted so dearly—did it find me.

I just needed to stop looking.

Only then did it find me. It was right in front of me the whole time. It didn't happen the way I thought it would, but in the end, it was better that way—because, like I learned that night, I was no good at engineering my own happiness.

Three up, three down. Thank God for extra innings.

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><p><em>Meh. What do you think?<em>

_Click that review button down there._

_Yep, that one._


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